Among their many missions, myths move us from a narrow vista or perception of ourselves (and the world) towards a more rounded vision and awareness. And specific myths can help us to find meaning in our trials and tribulations. They illustrate patterns imprinted into the core reality of the soul, and yes, often with the cost of suffering.

So in this sense, suffering is a given. A rugged necessity in the process of our development. Suffering shouldn’t be pathologized or viewed as wrong. And in a lofty sense, the ordeal is to be welcomed, embraced—loved, even—because we really only get to know the quiddity of ourselves through the transmutational crises that we’ve endured; not through all the times spent on the figurative “Cruisy Street” sipping piña coladas or the like.

Specific myths mirror our struggles back to us and connect us to something greater than ourselves. We could even say that they realign our somewhat restrictive and mundane selves to our larger Soul-Selves. Myths help us to embrace a multi-dimensional perception of ourselves by making the invisible and unconscious stories that we tell ourselves visible and conscious. But on the other hand, these myths may also expose some of our personal narratives, which are false and soul-disabling.  

In this process of inner transformation we’re tempered. Tempered by the challenges, which life throws our way. And whether we meet these challenges well or poorly, we come to learn something more of our own nature. There comes with this experience a forging—a rhizome strengthening—and a deeper trust in that which is greater than our prosaic, everyday lives.

We can also support ourselves along this transformative path by getting into the habit of asking what is sacred about the very moment that we find ourselves in. What is the deepest message that may be disclosed to us at this particular juncture in time? Just as many folk songs are encoded with philosophical wisdom layering, we too may weave and marry the poetic and mythic into our lives, even into its supposedly more pedestrian aspects. And this is one way in which we dream the ancient wisdom forward to inform the present.

Yes, myths are timeless and transcendent, but when we don’t consciously invite them into our lives, we are prone to live them out unconsciously and compulsively, and therefore, sometimes quite destructively. The more we resist the presence and power of myths, the more their archetypal patterns push upon us. And so they must be recognized. When we can perceive (or at least intuit) the mythologies that influence our lives, we realize that the mythic realm is mightier than our prideful common sense.

Myths are oneiric manifestations of the unconscious, distillations of folk and universal truths, which is why we’re drawn to them; they enable us to observe what our psyche is up to. Then our actions can be understood within a wider context of meaning. These stories work on us, as much as we work the story. This two-way process illustrates the fact that there is a psychic center beyond our own. 

Interpreting our experiences merely through a personal, and therefore reductive lens, is the expression of a person who is unawakened. We deplete our imaginal forces by honoring only the literalness of life. And when this depletion occurs, it results in a kind of soul flatness. When our primary modality of interpretation involves a symbolic component, then the myths have the potentiality to reveal pathways out of situations that are causing us great anguish. That is, if we indeed have the courage to follow them. And if we let them, myths will lead us.

Said another way, the gods and goddesses in the myths don’t just want to be read about, or talked about, or worshiped. They want to be lived. And they must sooner or later be lived for our own sanity, because in the most important analysis, they are us.

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Kristina Dryža is recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists and is also an archetypal consultant and author. She has always been fascinated by patterns for feels we are patterned beings in a patterned universe. Her work focuses on archetypal and mythic patterns and the patterning of nature's rhythms and their influence on creativity, innovation and leadership. Find out more at her website or watch her TEDx talk on "Archetypes and Mythology. Why They Matter Even More So Today."